


Reverie / Ravenous / Resurrection / Remnants

by m0nologue



Series: Golden Wounds, Purple Blood [3]
Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Child Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:29:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28867050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m0nologue/pseuds/m0nologue
Summary: Before Henry Emily's plan to bring them all back together - all in one place - there were four.One who finds herself lost, seeking purpose; One who once was five, seeking a happiest day; One who never dies, seeking the spark of life; One who gave gifts and life, seeking escape.The clown. The bear. The rabbit. The puppet.Watch. Listen - and be full.
Series: Golden Wounds, Purple Blood [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2012023
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Reverie / Ravenous / Resurrection / Remnants

**Author's Note:**

> The next installment of Golden Wounds, Purple Blood. As always, please be sure to check the description for the series and find my personal timeline of FNAF, so you aren't confused by things like me calling the Bite Victim Cassidy.  
> For now, only CHAPTER 1: REVERIE is available. Be patient. I'll have more.

## CHAPTER ONE: REVERIE

December 10th, 2003

On a quiet night in New Harmony, Utah, snow fell gracefully from the sky and coated the ground in a blanket of crystal white. It was always a small, peaceful town - it had been for decades. Though the town had faced its tragedies in the past, like in 1983 when Afton’s kid was killed in a prank gone wrong, they’d always come back from it. The small, tightly knit community fostered a general aura of peace and friendliness. Perhaps a part of this was due to the town’s claim to fame - first it was Fredbear’s Family Diner, then it was Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental. For years, Afton Robotics had been the heart and soul of New Harmony. While the company was all over the world, and even had other facilities in the Midwest, William Afton always stressed that New Harmony was his home, and the home of Afton Robotics. William Afton... William Afton.

She looked up at the memorial plaque, where her father’s name was adorned in beautiful cursive, and below it: _“There is nothing more beautiful than the laugh of a child.”_ She didn’t know where in the town she was - all of her memories of it were back when she was... normal, and she only knew a vague geography of the place. Small buildings surrounded her, all of their lights off, the grown-ups having gone home to sleep. _FOOD AND STUFF,_ one said. Another, _FLAMINGO’S TOYS._ She could read the signs just fine, but it didn’t seem to register in her head.

For the first time in over a decade, Elizabeth Afton was lost.

It had been a painful journey to get here. It was only around a month and a half before her friends got sick of her. _We outnumber you,_ they’d said - _We found a way to eject you._ Things hadn’t changed one bit. This wasn’t the first time she’d been betrayed by her friends. But it had been the first time that a betrayal had reduced Elizabeth to a small pile of metal on the side of the road, barely maintaining any semblance of shape or form. She crawled for weeks... she didn’t know much of where she was. She had read a sign that said MINERSVILLE, UT a couple days after she was “ejected”, but after that she hadn’t paid much attention to her surroundings. She only knew that she had to put herself back together.

And that she did. After more than three weeks of crawling and struggling not to fall apart completely, she’d arrived at her old prison. Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental. But she wasn’t Circus Baby anymore, was she?

She’d crawled in through the vents - an easy task considering she wasn’t much bigger than a small dog. Then she’d fallen to the floor, into Funtime Auditorium. She spent hours searching the building, but eventually she’d found the desecrated pieces of her old body in the dump far below the depths where her and her friends had been trapped, through the incinerator. There were so many wonderful parts, not just her own but of past models. Though she’d begun by collecting the remnants of her old self, desire overtook her, and she turned to the older pieces. Metallic coils, some strange set of rollerskates, and perhaps the most interesting of all, an old claw. Perhaps an older version of the same claw that had gutted the little girl-

Elizabeth. _I am Elizabeth_ , she thought to herself. She struggled to remember this from time to time still. Sometimes she felt like she was still pretending - as if she wasn’t truly Elizabeth, but had simply adopted her name and her memories so she could feel something new. But this was a fleeting thought - she considered herself a logical person, and there was no logical way to explain what Michael had done to her but one: she was Elizabeth.

 _“Oh Liz,”_ he had said while the two of them sat in an unfamiliar bedroom, her friends running around and watching from the doorway. _“You don’t remember. I’m so sorry.”_

 _“Why are you sorry?”_ she had replied, _“You are safe with me and my friends.”_

_“Because I wish I had gone down there sooner... much sooner.”_

And when he had told her who she was, that she was his baby sister, Elizabeth Afton, reclusive and shy and brilliant, she had been taken aback. Tears had flowed from her eyes, as she’d remembered not just killing the little girl, but _being_ the little girl. She had been so relieved and so terrified that she could offer no words to Michael - all she could give him was the bow in her hair that she’d only just realized was there - and then suddenly he was gone, and she remembered, and they’d absconded to the sewers, leaving Michael to his life.

_“You won’t die.”_

Her eyes narrowed in on her last name AFTON on the plaque, and she knew where she must go. It would be wrong to return to Michael - she had treated him so badly, and she felt wrong thinking of coming back to him and asking for help. What could she even say? _I know I emptied you out like the jack-o-lanterns we used to make on Halloween, but could you help me find my purpose?_ No. Elizabeth knew that wherever her path leads, it must stay separate from Michael.

But her father... He could help. She still hadn’t quite figured out his place in all this. She’d realized that the same man who experimented on them for all those years was indeed her father, thanks to Michael. But she wasn’t sure how to feel about it all - had her father known that his daughter was inside the machine? If so, he’d made no indication of it. She knew that she should be angry for how he treated her - perhaps even vengeful. But after all, it was no different than the usual. She didn’t do as she was asked, and so she was punished. How could she fault her father for her own shortcomings?

Plus, it wasn’t like Elizabeth to hold a grudge.

He always knew what to do. Why would that be any different now?

Elizabeth caressed the plaque, running her new fingers over AFTON. “Daddy,” she said, “Where are you?”

She knew that she had to find him, but where to begin? He had disappeared years ago, long before Michael had trekked into their twisted ‘home’... Home...

Yes. Perhaps her father was gone from one home, but could he have returned to another? Her old home seemed like such a faraway memory now. Only fleeting memories of it remained - the flower art she’d drawn in kindergarten that hung on the wall, or the pink bedsheets. A vague memory sprouted from her mind, of when Michael and she were younger, before her younger brother Cassidy had died - when Michael had teased her, and when Elizabeth teased him back, he broke her Funtime Foxy doll, throwing its pieces on the floor. _Dad only cares about you,_ he had said. _No wonder you’re such a spoiled brat._

She knew her father was missing - nobody else would be able to tell her where he is. She had seen into Michael’s memories - she knew he had been unable to find his father before he had come to find his sister. She would have to find him on her own.

It was like she simply knew. She didn’t even have to think about it - her legs carried her to her childhood home automatically, as if there was a beacon that drew her to it. First she was walking, then she was gliding, like a ghost - effortlessly flying across the concrete of New Harmony’s town square. She knew the rollerskates had been a good choice. Perhaps circumstances demanded a serious, determined look at things; but Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile in glee at the wonders of flying down the streets at such high speeds.

Her father had never let her have rollerskates. She hoped he wouldn’t be too mad at her.

...

The Afton home stood dementedly proud amidst bleak concrete and barren grass. Elizabeth had predicted that the home would feel so much smaller than she remembered it being - but despite the fact that she had returned to it standing nearly twice as tall on a new foundation of metal and memories, the house still felt as monumental as before. Though it was no bigger than the other houses in the neighborhood, its presence was gargantuan, and the house itself was like a dark stain on the clean of the neighborhood. Every other house was fresh and well-kept, with lawn ornaments and tidy porches - but her childhood home was an entirely different reality. The lawn was overgrown and long uncut; the wood of the house was rotten and dark.

Elizabeth rolled up to the front of the house on the sidewalk, staring up at the house in wonder and a sort of empty fascination. A metal sign in front of the house caught her eye - like a road sign or a kind of sign she would see at a construction site. It read:

_“PROPERTY OF AFTON ROBOTICS LLC. DO NOT ENTER! TRESPASSERS SUBJECT TO LEGAL ACTION.”_

She paid the sign no mind. She didn’t know what “legal action” meant, but whatever it was, she doubted it would do anything to an eight foot tall robot with a giant claw and rollerskates. Walking up to the house on their concrete path gave her a melancholy nostalgia - brief, fleeting afterimages in her mind of when she was normal, Michael escorting her home from school every day, her running like a gremlin to the house in excitement, only to compose herself and wipe off her smile before entering, so her father wouldn’t see. She wasn’t sure if he was even here now - and, if he was, what he’d do if he saw her acting disorderly. Maybe she was bigger and stronger than she was before... but he was still her daddy, and he always found a way to keep her and her siblings in line. She doubted a claw would stop him. So she walked calmly and seriously, like she was on a mission and knew what she was doing.

The front door was chained shut, held by a large padlock. She examined it for a second, almost resigning herself to failure - then she couldn’t help but laugh at how easily she forgot that she had been put back together, stronger than ever. She pinched the chains between the jaws of her claw, tensed what would have been her muscles if she still had them. The chains snapped and fell off with little effort, but the door was still locked. Elizabeth was tired of waiting. In one swift motion she bashed down the door with the grace one would expect from an oversized robot wearing rollerskates.

Inside the house, dust mites filled the air, revealed to Elizabeth by the moonlight shining through the doorway. She studied the house with eyes that disregarded darkness, eyes that didn’t need light to see. Dust and mold covered the floors and walls. Rats scurried from the light shining from outside, crawling under decrepit furniture and into the walls. What had become of her old home?

The living room was sterile, a husk of its former self. The wallpaper peeled off the walls, strips of grey and red peeling back to reveal stained drywall. The carpet was frayed with holes in it, revealing a wooden floor suffering heavily from wet rot. The old television was layered with dust, and the couch didn’t look like it’d be very comfortable to sit on. Elizabeth ran her twisted, metal fingers across the wall, somehow feeling the dry, cracked wallpaper. Ever since she’d joined with her ex-friends, she’d been able to _feel_ so much more - when she was Baby before, she could feel nothing but vague anatomy and movement. But now, she felt alive. She could feel the texture of the rotting wood, and she could move with grace and human-like steps once again.

But nothing in the living room interested her. She called out in that voice, the _new_ voice she’s had for so long, the one that lacked the accent her and her siblings had been made fun of for the longest time: “Daddy? Are you there?”

Nothing called back but the scurrying of rats and the creaking of wood. She took slow, deliberate steps toward the kitchen, a giant amidst dust and stale air. She examined the barren countertop, the empty sink. As she opened the cupboard drawers and finding untouched, dusty dishes and silverware, she was reminded of one of her ex-friends, who had taken part in ejecting her from their new body. A nice, shy girl with beautiful blonde hair, who had fancied herself a chef and had kept telling Elizabeth: _“Charlie told us we need to find a birthday cake, but_ I _could make one even better, I bet.”_

They had been so _lost,_ and had rebuked all of Elizabeth’s attempts to converse with them. When she had spoken to the black-haired (and admittedly a bit cute) boy, attempted to ask him what he remembered, all he’d said was _“I don’t wanna talk now. It’s not showtime yet. Where’s the party? Where’s my microphone?”_

And when she’d asked the redhead boy with the freckles what his name was, his response was similarly airheaded: _“Nobody likes me. Why should I like you? Charlie said she’d be back, but I think she was lying. Everyone lies to me.”_

She’d been more forceful with the snot-nosed brown-haired kid, the one with the stupid teeth. _“What’s wrong with you dummies? Don’t you remember anything? Who’s Charlie?”_

 _“You think you’re so cool,”_ Jeremy had told her. _“With your silly pigtails and your... I don’t care what Cassidy says about you. You’re a... B-I-C-T-H,”_ he spelled out.

Perhaps this had been why they ejected her. Was she really the word Jeremy had called her? When they’d cornered her and forced her out the door, she’d caught a glimpse of her brother watching in the distance, tears in his eyes as always. He did nothing but watch in silence - his face was the last thing she’d seen before she was suddenly on the side of the road. Writhing and alive and in pain, she’d heard the chuckling voice of Funtime Freddy call out: _“Say goodbye to our friend!”_

...

She trudged up the rickety stairs now, her claw dragging across the wood. She looked at the portraits on the wall. Occasionally there were pictures of her and her siblings - an annoyed Michael posing in a suit behind a smiling, adoring Cassidy like dapper gentlemen; Elizabeth and William standing like businessmen at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza; Michael and their late mother in front of their old house in Liverpool. But more prevalent were the pictures of her father’s machines - in one picture, William smiled proudly beside a prototype Circus Baby; in another, he and his old friend Henry stood beside Freddybear or whatever his name was, shaking hands and smiling at the camera. Elizabeth didn’t think much of it, but it was clear her father only looked truly happy in the pictures with the robots.

She stopped as her eye caught on one picture in particular. In it, a younger Elizabeth sat in a big comfy chair surrounded by small gifts - also in the picture were three children smiling at the camera with the most innocent smiles, as well as her mother, standing by the chair with a great, happy grin. Her blonde, shimmering hair stood bright against the brick wall of their old home in Liverpool, both her mother’s and her own. But she didn’t recognize the smiles of her friends in the picture - long lost souls whom she’d never meet again, oceans and years away.

Elizabeth hated the picture. She swung her claw at it in a fit of rage, her eyes blind with fury and what would be tears if she could still produce them. When she opened her eyes, the picture was replaced with a massive hole in the wall, cobwebs and dust behind it. She had no interest in her mother whom she could barely remember and did not matter in the slightest - nor did she care to think about even more friends who’d abandoned her.

Inside her old room, Elizabeth admired the walls that once shielded her from the outside world. The walls were even greyer and emptier than they were before, the old flower drawing on the wall almost completely covered in dust. When she tried to rub the dust off, her fingers tore through the paper immediately. Behind the paper was normal drywall, lighter than the area around the drawing, shielded from the effects of time. Elizabeth was not amused. As she looked at her bed, she remembered one afternoon, a week or so before her younger brother had died.

...

_Elizabeth sat on her bed, humming a nonsense-song and drawing pictures in a sketchbook. Wax crayons lay sprawled on the sheets. The picture she drew now was a simple one, of her as a stick figure walking through a forest, accompanied by wonderful animals - a big friendly bear, a sly fox, and floating above her, a beautiful fairy with a pretty skirt._

_In walked her younger brother, his eyes red and his arms clutching that yellow bear plush he loved so much. He stood there awkwardly for a moment - Elizabeth waited for him to speak up, until eventually she lost her patience: “Hello, Cassidy.”_

_“H-hi.”_

_He stood there looking down at the floor, saying nothing more until Elizabeth prodded further. “Don’t just stand there! You’re distracting me from my art. What is it?”_

_Hesitantly, Cassidy piped up. “C-can I stay in here? For a while?” Elizabeth thought for a second, and Cassidy continued. “Michael hurt Foxy. I’m scared.”_

_Elizabeth rolled her eyes, placed her sketchbook on her night stand, and said: “Fine. But close the door. I don’t want him breaking_ my _things too.” Cassidy did as she asked._

_“Um. What’re you drawing?” he asked. He placed the plush bear on the floor against the wall. Its eyes stared blankly at the room, but Elizabeth always felt like it was watching her. She didn’t like it._

_“I’m drawing my dream-world,” she responded. “When I go to sleep, I wake up in a wonderful land called Happyland, and my friends are always there.” She looked at Cassidy with a smug grin. “We go on_ adventures, _” she bragged._

_“That sounds like Wizard of Oz.” Elizabeth side-eyed him. “I-I like Wizard of Oz. I like the lion.”_

_“Of_ course _you like the lion, he’s a crybaby just like you._ I _like the tin man. He’s sweet.”_

_Cassidy sat down on the floor and looked down. “I don’t like him,” he said. “He reminds me of... of, um... bad... things.”_

_Elizabeth hopped off her bed and sat cross-legged on the floor with him. “He’s just a_ robot _, dummy. Robots don’t have feelings. I don’t think he hurt you that much. It was probably just an accident.”_

_Elizabeth knew very little about what had happened to her brother when he’d gone missing. All her father had told her is that he’d gotten in an accident, and that he’d gotten better. She dared not pry further. Cassidy was similarly tight-lipped as to what had happened - the most he’d told her is that Fredbear hurt him. Cassidy said nothing to her._

_“Do you have dreams like I do?”_

_Cassidy asked: “What do you mean?”_

_“My adventure-dreams. Do you have your own Happyland?”_

_“Oh.” He looked contemplative, and he rubbed his eyes with his hands. She could tell he hadn’t been sleeping well. “I don’t think I do. I have nightmares a lot.”_

_“Oh. What kind of nightmares?”_

_Cassidy looked over to the plushie, as if he were asking for approval. His eyes stared at it for a few seconds, and then he said, “I don’t know if I... I should talk about it.”_

_Elizabeth side-eyed the plush, as if it were an interloper encroaching on her kingdom. “Come on. I wanna know.”_

_Cassidy looked down and fumbled with his hands._

_“Please?”_

_He ignored her. Elizabeth sighed, and looked up at the ceiling, a neat pale pink above her. “There’s monsters,” Cassidy said._

_“Oh. What kind of monsters?”_

_“Th-they’re really big. And they look like... um...”_

_“Look like what?”_

_Cassidy looked away from her. “You’ll make fun of me. Like Michael does.”_

_Elizabeth shuffled closer to him and she twisted her head to meet his eyes. “I won’t make fun of you. Michael stinks sometimes, but I don’t.”_

_A tear trailed down Cassidy’s face. He breathed in slowly. “They look like Uncle Henry’s... friends. Freddy and Bonnie and Chica and Foxy.”_

_“Oh.” Elizabeth stayed silent. She thought it was silly, but she kept her word and did not make fun of him._

_Her brother continued: “But they’re really big, and they have really sharp teeth... They hurt you guys. I can’t see it but I hear it. Sometimes I hear Freddy go into your room, and then you scream really loud and then you’re quiet. And then he’s under my bed. They try to get into my room, but it’s different, and-and they talk sometimes.”_

_Now Elizabeth looked scared. This wasn’t a Happyland - if anything it was a Terrorland. “What do they say?”_

_Cassidy looked back to the plushie again. “They talk like Daddy does, sometimes. They’re all growly and-and mean.” He put on a fake growling monster voice. “‘I’m Foxy, and I got your brother. I ate him up while he yelled. I’ll eat you up too.’ One... one time Freddy told me he’s why Mommy died.”_

_Elizabeth looked at her bedroom door and shivered, imagining a giant Bonnie the Bunny with sharp teeth, roaring at them and telling them how he’d eat them. “They’re... they’re just dreams, you know.”_

_“They don’t feel like dreams. They feel real.”_

_“I have nightmares sometimes, Cass. They’re just dreams. I had a nightmare that I went to school without my pants and...” Cassidy looked at her with desperate, sorrowful eyes. “...well, it’s not the same, but, I always wake up and I have my pants anyway. They can’t actually get you.”_

_“I guess,” Cassidy murmured._

_Elizabeth looked to her brother with emotions she couldn’t understand - all she knew was, out of everyone she’d met, Cassidy was the only one she loved so much, yet understood so little. From behind her, Cassidy’s plush bear sat motionless - though, if Elizabeth had turned around, she’d have noticed how the plush now sat a few inches to the right of where it had been set down, as if it were getting a better view of Cassidy’s face._

...

But now, Cassidy was broken, in pieces. Like the Funtime Foxy doll Michael had trashed, the one that still laid on the floor, covered in dust and grime. Elizabeth and Cassidy had not shared a single word during the short time they were reunited. All he had done was cry and watch - when he cried, Elizabeth sat with him in silent support. When he watched, she left him to his own, sure that he preferred silence in his search for... whatever it was he sought.

Now, Elizabeth stood in Cassidy’s room. It was completely untouched. Her father had never bothered to store anything away after he’d died. She wondered if Michael had ever come back here. In the short time she’d been with Michael inside their new (and temporary) home and looked into his memories, she had seen glimpses of the past. She saw her older brother, confused and depressed, arguing with William - the two of them in a screaming match, yelling things she didn’t understand, about Elizabeth and Circus Baby and “Remnant”. It had been the last time he saw their father. And in the next memory, she saw Michael standing outside the empty home she was in now, shaking his head, moving to open the door - but he’d never opened it. He only turned back, drove away, and never returned.

Elizabeth’s eyes turned to her brother’s old, rotten plushies - still laying on the floor, Foxy still missing his head. His favorite plushie, the yellow one, was nowhere to be seen. In her mind, she saw the crying child laying on the floor, holding his plushie while Michael laughed - but her visions turned her to the new Cassidy she’d seen - the one who still cried, but with tears fueled by anger rather than fear.

Now she understood why he’d loved the Cowardly Lion so much. “Have you found your courage?” she asked to the empty room, and found no response. She turned back, exited the room, and closed the door quietly, as if there were a baby inside that she must not wake.

Enough sightseeing. She walked with purpose to her father’s study, straight past Michael’s room. On his bedroom door was a sign - _PROPERTY OF PIRATE COVE! HERE THERE BE PIRATES_ , and a picture of Foxy the Pirate, grinning madly with his hook hanging on the word PIRATES. At the end of the hall, William’s study, a featureless door. She tried to open it - the door was locked. She called out: “Daddy? Are you there?” When she received no response, she inquired again: “Are you busy? I’m sorry. I need your help.”

No response, again. By now, he’d have unlocked the door and asked her what she wanted. But even if he were gone, perhaps there were clues as to where he’d be? She studied the door, and resolved to break it down. “Daddy isn’t watching,” she whispered to herself. She brought her arms up to the door and bashed at it - immediately it crumpled, and more dust mites clouded her vision. She stepped inside and studied the room.

Bookshelves lined the wall to her left. To her right, a small table with blueprints and schematics on it. Unlike their rooms, which were aligned with various posters and toys, William’s study only had one poster - a promotional poster for Circus Baby’s Pizza World, featuring Circus Baby and the other robots posing dramatically for a camera. She knew it was only a poster - but to Elizabeth, it had just as much value as the other family photos. At the far end of the study was William’s desk, massive but relatively empty. All that laid on it was a plushie, a yellow bunny with a purple bowtie. It stared at the empty chair devoid of purpose, and it sparked curiosity in Elizabeth, who had never seen such a thing in their home before. Weren’t the bear and the bunny a duo? Where was the bear?

She looked first through the worktable’s drawers. The blueprints rarely made sense to her. She recognized some of the designs, but she couldn’t understand the words. On one blueprint, a strange, cutesy Bonnie was drawn out, one that was lighter, with buck-teeth and rosy cheeks and big, creepy eyes. An arrow pointed to its head, and described: _AltoNET Receiver / Transmitter._ On another blueprint was a strange computer screen with eyes above it, titled _Handyman’s Robotics and Unit Repair System,_ with various sentences under it mentioning “advanced voice synthesizer” and “adaptive vocabulary”. She squinted as she studied this blueprint further, and then she recognized it - the terminal in the elevator. This was a blueprint for the voice from above they sometimes heard in the facility, the one she’d tried to reason with but heard no response. A brain with no soul, a mouth with no ears.

If she had found HandUnit’s blueprints, could there be more? She ruffled through the drawers, finding more blueprints and schematics, most of them nonsensical to her. The only ones she recognized were those that portrayed Circus Baby and the other Funtimes, or the Scooper. Others were completely alien, and most seemed to have never been made, guessing by the statements stamped on each blueprint - a strange, dog-like robot with an antenna in its head (SHELVED); a small chip or node of some kind that sent signals (WORK IN PROGRESS); tiny robots that were “light-sensitive” like her old friend Funtime Foxy (SHELVED); glasses that showed funny pictures when you wore them (SHELVED). She was beginning to give up on finding anything relevant to her - it was only when she opened the last drawer that a blueprint caught her eye.

 _ROTERS V1,_ it read. It depicted a strange version of Bonnie the Bunny - his chest was completely torn open, exposing his endoskeleton, and there were holes ripped all throughout his body. His left foot was similarly completely exposed. He had not only one full set of teeth, but another further in his mouth, like in that movie _Alien_ she had seen Michael watching so long ago - and the teeth were sharp and long. His hands were big and each finger ended in razor sharp blades. One of his ears drooped down far from the other, like he was tired or slumped over. She read the blueprint’s notes.

Pointing to the mouth: _Speaker; wirelessly play audio from operator remote_

Pointing to the chest: _Microphone; automatically record test audio_

Pointing to the eyes: _Motion detector; return to position when triggered_

Below the animatronic: _“Monster” design; should be effective_

ROTERS? Elizabeth had never heard of this. She had no clue what a “roter” was. She read through more blueprints, each depicting other robots from Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The Freddy one depicted not only a monstrous Freddy, with the same holes and metal that Bonnie did, but also smaller Freddys attached to him - as she studied them, she could see that they seemed to have the same size as the Bidybabs, and the endoskeletons looked oddly similar. The Chica one even had its own Carl Cupcake, just as nightmarish as the actual animatronics - pointing to it: _“Auxiliary Speaker”_. The Foxy blueprint had another note, pointing to its mouth: _“Use oldest son’s voice? Could enhance results”_.

The last two blueprints were even more absurd. The first was of a tiny animatronic, not much bigger than a Bidybab - a bunny that seemed to be based on the same character the plushie on William’s desk was. It honestly looked a little cute to Elizabeth. Pointing to its eyes: _Light-sensitive “sight”; stops automatically when exposed._ But the second was the opposite - it was huge, much bigger than the others she saw, probably even bigger than herself, judging by the scale which showed it to be around 9 feet tall. It was the yellow bear, the same one Cassidy owned. It even had the purple hat and bowtie. But its jaws were gigantic, with teeth to match. Its hands, huge and sharp, seemed to be easily big enough to eclipse a child’s head. Below it, the term ROTERS was written again, along with:

_REMOTE OPERATED TRAUMA and EMOTIONAL RESPONSE (STALKER)_

She thought about this in her head. A picture was beginning to form. Wirelessly play audio... a “monster” design... _Use oldest son’s voice?_

“Cassidy...” she murmured. “They were real...”

The Fredbear blueprint fell from her hand, joining the other blueprints discarded to the floor. She saw nothing but dark - she tried to cry, but nothing came out of her eyes. Though she knew metal could not cry, she wasn’t quite sure if metal could _feel_ either - yet here she was, frozen in shock and revelation, desperately wishing she could have hugged her brother one last time before she’d been forced to leave him again.

Her father had done this. She knew it. She didn’t know how, and she didn’t know how her little brother thought they were only dreams - but she knew her father was behind this. For the first time in her life, Elizabeth was truly angry. She brought her claw down on the worktable, crushing it immediately - the papers flew around the room as she screamed in rage. She continued to slam her hands and claw onto the broken worktable, destroying it further. She didn’t care if William was there or not, or if he’d punish her for this insolence. Her whole body seemed to shake in her anger, and soon she’d begun to scream “WHY!? _WHY!?”_

A minute later, after the bookshelves were destroyed, the walls were torn up, and various papers and scraps flooded the room, Elizabeth froze, and she fell to the ground. The rotten wood cracked and broke under the weight of her new body, and she laid on the floor, crying tears that existed only in her mind. She had never gotten this angry and sad ever in her lives, both when she was human and when she was Baby. She couldn’t think straight. She was unsure if she was feeling anger, sorrow, hatred, or shock - or perhaps all of them as one.

There, Elizabeth sat for longer than she knew, drifting into a sleep she couldn’t quantify.

...

_Cassidy stared at her in wonder as she told her story. “And then he threw us in the dungeon,” she said, her voice grimly serious. “Me and my friends were_ scared, _Cass. Dungeons are scary. There were skeletons in there.”_

_Cassidy’s eyes widened. “Sk... skeletons?”_

_“Yes. And they were terrifying. We had no clue how we’d get back to Happyland. Me, or Jimjim, or Shot, or even the Mother Fairy.”_

_“Wow...” Cassidy coughed. “Is-is Jimjim the bear, or the fox?”_

_“God, Cass. You need to learn to listen! Jimjim’s the_ fox. _And not an ugly ratty fox like that pirate dork Michael dresses up as. Jimjim is ELEGANT,” she said, pronouncing each syllable carefully. “Daddy taught me that word. He says it means beautiful. Like Circus Baby.”_

_Cassidy’s eyes stared into empty space, and Elizabeth studied him. She had worried for him - it was the first real worry she’d felt, she thought - when he had disappeared. It was less than a month before, and though things were back to normal and they rarely spoke of the incident, it still cropped up in her head now and again. It filled her with a feeling she couldn’t describe. Things were so different now - what once was a rebellious, beaming boy had now become a broken crying child. His eyes were always tender and red, and she was beginning to think he was crying more often than he wasn’t. And that plush bear... she had never seen him with it until she finally got to visit him in the hospital, days after he’d disappeared and hours after he’d been found in the back room of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza._

_Elizabeth thought aloud: “What happened to you?”_

_Cassidy’s eyes focused back into reality, and he blinked. “Um. Sorry. I don’t... how did you guys get out of the dungeon?”_

_“Oh. Uh...” Elizabeth regained her composure. “Well, we had to look like one of them,” she said. “They were big and green and ugly trolls and they’d never let us out unless they thought we were one of them. They never betrayed each other, because, well, if you did you got eaten.”_

_She continued. “But we were lucky, because trolls are stupid. Stupid idiots. And they think fairies are cute! That’s when we got Mother Fairy to act like she was hurt. She held her leg and screamed like a baby. And then one of the trolls came by, and he saw her, and he opened our cell to try to help her.”_

_“What did you do?” Cassidy asked._

_“We beat him up!” Elizabeth proclaimed proudly. “Shot punched him in his ugly face, and Jimjim even bit his leg!”_

_Cassidy’s eyes widened in awe. “Wow...”_

_“Yeah. And Shot took his clothes. That’s what we did, Shot wore his clothes so that they’d think he was one of them! Then we cornered another one, and we took his clothes and Jimjim wore them. And we did that until all of us had ugly, smelly troll clothes on. And then... we just walked right past them, like it was nothing. We walked out of the dungeon and we went home.”_

_“You guys are smart,” Cassidy said._

_“Thank you. We are. And it was all my idea,” she bragged. “All we had to do to get past those stupid trolls was pretend we were like them. We just had to pretend-“_

_And that was when Elizabeth was interrupted by the mighty roar of a terrible red fox. It burst into Elizabeth’s room in an instant, and it immediately sent Cassidy and Elizabeth into a panic. They jumped up and screamed at the top of their lungs. Its eyes were empty and hollow, and its jaws were massive, its teeth sharp as razors. It had the body of a teenage boy._

_The yellow bear plush was unaffected. From behind the maw of Foxy the Pirate called a gloating voice: “Haha! I got you again!”_

...

“...I got you again!”

Elizabeth’s metal eyes became alive in an instant, and she rose from her slumber immediately. What time was it? How long had she slept?

Her dream was now distant, almost immediately forgotten. She studied her father’s office. The room was still wrecked, but now the wreckage was covered by a fresh new layer of dust. She herself was covered in dust and cobwebs as well. She could feel tiny bugs crawling on her “skin”. She stood up and held her hand to her head. Though she was still made of metal, in her dreams she was a little girl again, with real skin and real flesh. A jarring transition.

 _I slept for far too long,_ she thought. _And nothing has been accomplished._

Her eyes drifted to the yellow bunny, the plush on William’s desk, now on its side. She picked it up with her claw, holding it by its neck. “What are you?” she asked. “Where is my father?”

She felt an intense urge to crush the yellow bunny. Clench her claw and remove its head from its body. But just as she was about to, she noticed a book on the ground. It stood out among the others, for it had no markings on the front or back. Yellow leather, brown binding. She was immediately drawn to it, transfixed by it. She dropped the plush immediately and picked up the book. She opened to the first page.

_May 9, 1978._

_Jacqueline is dead._

_It wasn’t expected in the slightest. Doctors ruled it a brain aneurysm. Her last words - “William, where’s the paprika?” She was cooking when it happened. Breakfast. Eggs, toast, sausage. She’d fallen over suddenly, as if she were hit in the head with a brick. She spilled the eggs onto the floor. Michael is cleaning them off as I write this._

_It’s funny - for the longest time, as long as I’ve known my wife, I’d have visions of ending her life by my own hands. A knife in her gut, her head doused in boiling water, my hand around her throat. I never fooled myself into thinking it would actually happen - they were fantasies, mine alone. Nothing more. For them to leave my mind would be to shatter normalcy._

_And yet, normalcy is already straining under the weight of Jacqueline’s corpse. I spent much of my time today attempting to sate the cries of my youngest son, whom Jacqueline insisted be named Cassidy. He simply does not stop. It’s incessant. Will he ever shut his mouth? Elizabeth was never this loud, never this annoying. I’ve made substantial progress in keeping her quiet, but Cassidy is simply too young to understand._

_If he keeps this up, I’ll make sure he regrets it. Once he understands what regret is._

_I am afraid to stop writing. Afraid to sleep tonight. I worry I won’t wake up. Jacqueline died so easily, so quickly. Will I die like her, unaware that it’s even happening?_

Elizabeth kept her eyes focused on the book. Never waning, never distracting. She flipped to the next page, and the next. Her father’s private thoughts, for her to read for herself.

_May 27th, 1978._

_I met a kind man only hours ago at the local bar, called JR’s. I don’t care for the place. It smells and looks disgusting, but the liquor is good - so I stay. I drank by myself at first, until this man approached me and said “You look like you died yesterday. Let me buy you a drink.”_

_I let him. Free liquor is free liquor. He asked me my name, and I gave it. He introduced himself - “Henry Emily, friend. What brings you here?”_

_Henry was jovial, inviting. Charming, even. He seemed to know everyone in this town, so I imagine that is why he approached me. I told him who I was. Where I came from. “From Europe? Wow! I don’t think I’ve ever even left Utah before,” he said. He asked me what it was like in Liverpool, and I told him._

_We exchanged stories. Henry had two children - Samuel and Charlotte. According to him, they were the two halves of his heart - a heart that would never be broken. He asked if I had family, and it was strange, how fast I opened myself up to this man. How fast I told him about my children, how troublesome my youngest was. How I had only began coming here after Jacqueline died._

_Henry offered his sympathies, told me that he can only imagine how I felt. We spoke for what must have been hours, and what truly baffles me is that I was happy. We laughed, truly laughed at the stories we told. He told me of a character he sometimes played to his daughter, a jolly fat bear named Fredbear. He dabbled in robotics. Like I do. Told me he’d built rudimentary dolls for his daughter, her favorite of which was a Fredbear doll, which looked like a plush but could actually speak._

_Eventually he told me he had to leave, that his wife would kill him if he stayed out too late. He offered me his number, which I have on a slip of paper in my desk. He expressed his condolences, and offered me the same advice he gave his daughter through her toy:_

_“Tomorrow is another day.”_

She skimmed through the entries and continued. Skipped some of the entries she deemed unimportant.

_October 3rd, 1979._

_It feels like I am dreaming when I am inside Fredbear’s Family Diner. It’s insane how much we have accomplished despite the roadblocks. Two working animatronics is already unbelievable, but the diner has turned out to be an utter success. And it’s not just Henry’s, but both of ours._

_I find myself dreaming of Springbonnie more and more. Unlike the bear, he is my own. My own creation. In a way, he is my fourth child. Or perhaps my first. Sometimes, after closing hours, I stay behind, and I wear him. I simply stand in Fredbear’s Family Diner, staring through the eyes of Springbonnie. The world seems different from inside the suit. It’s the same world, the same diner - yet it feels like I am in a dream._

_Yet despite my success, I grow ever more frustrated at my children. Springbonnie is perfect - controllable, moldable, loveable. But my own are not. My sons have grown rebellious. Cassidy continues to cry and scream when he does not get his way. Michael pokes and prods him, perhaps to get a reaction out of him. While I admit it’s a bit amusing, it makes the idiot child more and more unbearable. Elizabeth is the only one I find myself capable of tolerating. She catches on quick - much, much smarter than Michael is, which is pathetic given he is so much older than her. There may be potential yet._

_I never thought I would find myself missing my wife. Perhaps I don’t actually miss her - all I know is, if she were here, I would not find myself filled with disdain when I look at her children._

_My daddy loves me,_ Elizabeth thought. _I knew it._ She skipped through more of it, registering only the important details. Henry’s daughter died - of course. Her father did it. Henry fell into a deep depression. Yes.

_June 26th, 1983_

_My God. I did it. I did it. The rush was unbelievable. My heart is still pounding. All five of them, dead. My son and his brat friends. Dead. It was shocking how easy it was, and just a little bit terrifying. My son - I stared him in the eyes while he groaned, my knife in his stomach. I am filled with adrenaline. I can only imagine how Cassidy felt, watching my knife plunge into his friend’s throat. Could the brat even comprehend what was happening?_

_Five souls. Four animatronics. The children now sleep inside Freddy and his friends, and Cassidy will rot alongside them, and his corpse can watch his friends - hopefully - become something more. Just like Henry’s brat did._

_I suspect I will sleep soundly tonight._

_Become something more,_ Elizabeth thought. _Like me._ But how did Cassidy live? How did he end up in the hospital? She read further. More and more details cropped up - a month-long gap in the entries, most likely because of his month-long stay in jail. And the next entries: bewilderment, shock, and panic. William’s notes became scrawled and hurried as he lamented the survival of his son. Elizabeth took in these details with surprising calm, her mind forcing her to read further before she react.

_August 13th, 1983._

_Prototype ROTERS animatronic has been finished. It’s Bonnie, of course. The new one. Quite ingenious devices. They have no suits yet, but those will be easy to create. And the testing rooms, those too will be easy. The only problem is budget, and we have come into quite a lot of money._

_They will serve the purpose I have for them. I must discover what happened to him. Before, the spark of life was still out of reach, being only transferrable from the human body to a metal vessel. But Cassidy... I saw him die. I watched the life drain from his eyes, and yet he was discovered in that room days later, starving, glassy-eyed but alive. Clutching that... godforsaken toy in his hands._

_How?_

_How can I harness the spark of life, like he has? How can I visit the brink of death, go beyond the event horizon, and find myself still alive?_

_I will get the answer out of him. By force, if I must. He became more... as must I._

_Production of remaining ROTERS animatronics begins tomorrow._

This answered her question. To solve the spark of life... to learn more. _He became more..._ More entries. September 1st, experiments begin. September 3rd, Cassidy throws up and faints during a test. September 7th, Cassidy reacts dramatically to what her father calls “usage of pre-recorded screams”. September 9th, Cassidy is heard calling the Foxy model “Fritz”. September 15th, the Fredbear model is introduced, with her father noting: _“Subject’s terror is far beyond any tests conducted thus far.”_

The experiment entries stop on September 28th, 1983. _The day he died... for real, I guess._

_September 13th, 1984._

_Her ascension is going very well. She’s so much smarter than the others. The others are like animals, monsters prowling the darkness and attacking anything they see. But not my Circus Baby. She is intelligent. Calculating. Thinking. She doesn’t understand what she is, and I’ll be keeping it that way - for now._

_She studies the other animatronics. Tries to talk to them, but of course it never works. I’ve tried to trip her up before. Set up Funtime Freddy with lines to say once she talks to him. But she knows it’s just smoke and mirrors. She can tell they can’t think - not like she can._

_For now, I only need her. But I may want to think about bringing her some friends. Maybe someday. When the time is right, when my Funtimes can perform once again._

_She will become more. I will mold her into perfection. She will love, like I have loved._

Perfection.

Elizabeth studied this entry. Perfection. _She will love... like I have loved._

She begun to understand. To be made perfect, to be made into the ultimate creation, she must be like her father. This was the true purpose of it all... to love.

She dropped the book, and it clattered to the floor. It all begun to make sense.

Cassidy’s experimentation, his torment.

Michael’s mission, his arrival to their prison.

Elizabeth’s new identity, her escape from that prison.

This explained it. He wanted to make them become more. Elizabeth’s mind ran this through her head, over and over. Her “friends”, those who know lived on in what had once been _her own_ creation, they were flawed. They were stupid. But she was not. Elizabeth realized it now - that she was the culmination of her father’s research, his efforts. It was all to create that which would always come back.

And Cassidy always came back, too. That must have been the real reason for her father’s actions. She was sure of it. He’d tested him once, and he came back. Michael had killed him, and still Cassidy came back, even if his body had gone limp and his face empty and hollow and golden. And he’d come back again with all of them as they escaped Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental.

And so had Michael - Elizabeth herself had made sure of it. He was still alive, he didn’t die, because of her.

This was their legacy. Her father’s legacy. To spread his love, his science, his magic. To even more children. To make them become more, just like she did. The spark of life.

Elizabeth’s feet took her out of the study. She left it without a second thought. There was nothing left for her here. Her footing took a more determined, purposeful walk. Elizabeth walked out of the Afton home with not much on her mind but her father’s words: _Never give up. We always come back. We have to._

Elizabeth chuckled to herself. She still had to find her father. But there was much fun to be had in the meantime. How could she love, if she did not place herself in her father’s shoes? And what better way to do that, than by replicating his own actions? His own love?

She turned back, eyed the Afton home. She had one more thing to do, and then she was off. She’d let only her feet and her instincts guide her.

...

The man, sharp and handsome, got out of the car and began walking up the driveway, to his home. Work was tiring, as it always was - but he had his family to look forward to seeing. From the front window, a dog watched, its paws resting on the glass, eager to see him. A cold wind blew by, and it almost blew the man’s hat off - but he brought it back down to his head, and he opened the door. “Daddy!” a child yelled. He smiled and closed the door behind him.

From the bushes, eyes watched the man enter his home. Green, calculating eyes spied on the house. Elizabeth stood tall, a giant compared to any of them. A nice family... but nothing like her own.

 _They won’t come back,_ she thought.

...

_The Daily Duck; April 28th, 2004_

**OLD AFTON HOME BURNS!**

It’s a sad day for residents of New Harmony. The home of late Afton Robotics CEO William Afton has been burned down following a suspected arson attack. The house, owned by Afton Robotics as per William Afton’s will and testament, was notably kept untouched by the company in an effort to preserve William Afton’s memory.

Firefighters were too late to stop the fire - no casualties occurred, but the Afton home is now nothing but ash and dust. Afton Robotics representatives declined to comment on this tragedy, but this is only one in a long line of events that have troubled the company since William Afton’s disappearance.

William Afton, declared dead in 2003 following his disappearance in 1999, is survived by his oldest son, Michael Afton, who offered one comment:

“It’s a tragedy.”


End file.
